CRToonMike

Awesome! the lip synch and the acting of the narrator is just first-class! Now are you going to do the rest of this 2-album set? (ducks and runs for cover) This should be a great addition to a demo reel for sure! mike r.

One thing to keep in mind with clothes is that wrinkles is a good thing. I would have the splines kinda follow the contours and mimic the way cloth is sewed together. The face is good, could be better if there was some sharper contrasts, like with the eyes and the smooth blending from them to the cheek. Very good start so far, though. mike r.

Here's my idea for the pizza box -- they're all promotional give-aways. Guy opens the box and there's a pizza-printed frisebee(sp) in it with a coupon for a free pizza. This eliminates the need for the guy to check all the boxes, He could still bite into one and then realize they're made of rubber. Then he could fling a pizza-frisbee at the seagull, misses and the frisbee boomerrangs back at him and knocks him out. How does that work? mike r.

Thanks for the tute John! I'll try it when ZBrush releases the Mac 2.0 version. mike r.

mommy...

cool beans! Why you could even create a very simple biped figure and then apply diplacement maps to them for a crowd scene... anyway, looks good. Hope it animates well1 mike r.

I would keep the inner part of the eyepiece black and make the outline yellow. No reflection or highlights on the black inner part. Set the ambiance of the yellow part kinda high, so that when his face is in shadow, the yellow outline will stand out. I think that'll make him a bit more menancing. As far as the shapes go, Spidey's the classic -- gives lots of peripheal (spelling?) vision and is graphically distinctive. From what I can interoplate from the portion of the costume's chest (#4) the "M" is pretty straight. So, having straight lines for the eyepieces would 'match' the costume design. Maybe make the eyepieces shape like the negative space inbetween the "legs" of the "M" and the center, kinda like: |\ for the right side and /| for the left. As far as the head shape, DarkLimit was very spot-on when he said the head shape itself is like spidey. What kind of character is Mongoose? Arial acrobat, street brawler... ? For instance, if he's a street brawler, then make the head shaped like there's a helmet there. "Gloss" over the ears, after all why give opponets the chance to grab them, etc... Maybe a stylized Roman warrior helmet would work? If he's an acrobat, then the mask/cowl should be very loose (helps with movement and is harder for an advesary to grab and hold on to), except for the eyepieces. One of the things that Gill Kane (whom I still miss seeing stuff from) would do when designing costumes is to look at the contours and muscles of the body and let a costume evolve from that. His Hal Jordan/Green Lantern costume is the perfect example of that. hth mike r.

Amazing what just a few shifted splines will do, ain't it? Great Job Pat! She's looking very good and the resemblance is really there. mike r.

Really nice head. It has a real nice 'buddha' feel to it. mike r.

Good job, very nice figure modeling. I agree with the logo size also. And something that's been bothering me about it, shouldn't the eyes on the mask be more curvy-oval instead of the rounded triangle he seems to have now? About the webbing, have you tried using the hair function (if you have 10.5(?))? mike r.

The two eye'd model does work better in conveying emotions and such, especially in a fish where you don't have as much body language, so to speak, to work with to convey emotions. Really am enjoying looking at them. Can't wait for the textured versions. mike r.

Great budgie! He has character and I get an impression of his personality (or the voices in my head are louder than usual ). It'll be fun to see how you move the bird! mike r.

Yeah, I've been to that space were if I had to move one more CP I would go mad, mad I tell you! :lol: By definate line, I meant something that'll individualize the critter. In the altered picture the green line is part of that (called sometimes, iirc, the 'action' line or center line). Anyways, the included image describes visually what I verbally rambled on about :D Here's a url (got it from the ARM) for some proceedural shading you could try -- [url="http://www.babbagepatch.com/cd/"]Diffusion Grating[/url] And over in the Hash Animaster List, Jim Talbot has a thread about some texturing tutes he did. Here's the link to that thread -- [url="http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2315"]Texturing Tute[/url] He has done something really great here and should help you out. You can check out the [url="http://www.lowrestv.com/arm/"]ARM[/url] (Animation Master Resource Matrix) and go to the Materials/FX section for some tutes on texturing. Quite helpful (keep in mind there are a number of "dead" links on that page :angry: When I was trying to get the hang of texturing with texture maps (and still learning btw) I exported the MDL file and made a new project file and then imported the MDL (can export/import MDL files by right clicking/control-clicking on the objects folder in the Project workspace and then selecting the menu item that you want to do). In 10.5 you can select the model and then in its properties go to file and then you can basically do a save as. I would then apply the decal/texture to the model and just muck about with changing the decal's properites and so on. When ever I'm going to to a major change, I do a save as to the model and then do my changes. My renaming scheme just adds a letter to the end of the name and before the .mdl extension. hth mike r.

Nice critter you have there!. Agree with the opinion of smoothing out the area between the eyes. Or give the lil' guy nostrils (as your avatar has). Doing a character w/o a nose but with the pair o' peepers and mouth is a good challenge. Overall, there's a lot of character here but one thing to my eye is lacking: a distinctive line. All the lines/contours of the body are pretty much straight or "standard" curves (like in the side view of the wings). The segmentation in the body itself could be a bit more 'curvy' -- for instance instead of just going around the front from the side, make the line more of a "S" curve -- you have the beginings of that curve as shown in the side view, now if that was emphasized and strengthened I feel it would make some kind of "solid" anatomy exists in this bug. And that curve on the sides/front could be echoed in the antenna's curve. I would try to avoid things "lining up" as the shoulder-elbow-wrist does. If the wrist (and rest of the hand) was lowered down (much like a human hand) it could give a bit more visual interest. And in the same vein, throw the shoulders back or forward. IMHO, you can have a balanced figure without having all the parts in a straight line. I'm assuming that there's wings on the back of the bug, and what we're seeing is the 'cup' for the wings (like with ladybugs and other beetles) and if that's the case, angling them so the top is closer to the shoulders and the bottom is further away from the body proper would look a bit more interesting. Right now it looks as if the bug is wearing one of those hard-bodied backpacks. One last thing -- the ears look "off" to me. Maybe instead of pointing them, you could make them into a ridge system that would then lead up the sides of the head and eventally become the antenna... Just my opinions looking at the captures of the bug and thinking what I would do if it was my model. Be interesting to see how this critter evolves, you have a great start! mike r.

It looks like you're using the Porcelain material; so the weirdness could be coming from patches whose normals are facing inward. Do a shift-1 and that'll make the normals indicators come on. The yellow things should be pointing outward. On the ones that are pointing inward, click on the patch selection tool and then on the offending patch. Hit the f key (to flip normals) and that should make them look better. Sometimes, in my case, with nothing selected I hit the pgUP key (which increases the polycount for the shaded view) and that sometimes makes weird stuff go away (like it's a screen redraw prob.). hth mike r.

The wireframe is looking good. One thing that I've found helpful in getting rid of bumps is to select two (or three) spline rings, in your case the bottom two of the bird's body. Hide the rest of the model, and then from the top view and sides smooth out the rings. when that's done Then show the rest of the model, select the topmost ring you just worked on and the spline ring above that. Hide the rest except for those two rings. Smooth the top one and leave the bottom one alone. Rinse, lather, repeat. This may be time-consuming, but I've found that it's quite effective (at least in my world ). Used this method to smooth out the contours in a characters hips and belly and it really helped. Oh, it works for either horizontal or vertical spline rings. Think there's a number of threads about hair/feathers in the Alpha forum here, very good stuff. mike r.

Way cool stuff you have there. Spent quite a bit of time browsing your site and for a change words fail me. This project of yours will be awesome when it's done! Good Luck!

I would start with the beak. And look at how beaks 'work' in live Budgies (Parakeets?). Do you have one as a pet? If not, go to a pet store where they sell 'em and look at how they move and such. For instance, when Budgies move their head, it looks like just the head moves and there's no obvious turning or twisting between the head and rest of the body. Info like this can help in modeling. Also by looking at the way they open their beak can help. Budgies and 'keets have a tongue that ends in a point. The upperbeak is pretty much "locked" in place with the skull and the lower beak has a lot of mobility. Like with the head turn, there's no obvious change to the surrounding area of the mouth of the bird. there ya go, you don't need to make the lower beak a part of the head mesh. Just make sure that the feathers around the beak cover any area that could reveal your construction. and the group of feathers around the lower beak/side of mouth, sometimes puff out like a cheek. Nice little thing that could help with making expressions. Doug is totally right when he said to figure out what you want the bird to do. The more complete your storyboards the better idea you'll get of what's going to be required of the model itself. In my case, I have a Grylii-type character (Grylii is the term I've heard that referers to characters who's head is its body -- like Killer Bean, the California Rasins and those M&M dudes), and I want this character to have expressive eyes and eyebrows. I started off with more-or-less reality based eyes (round, etc) and the problem with that was it made the eyes indent too much or buldge out too much from the face. When I flattened the eye-sphere a bit and tweaked the eyelids, it worked better. I wouldn't have any idea why the 'perfect sphere-eyes' wouldn't work if I didn't have the story board that gave me a "heads up" so to speak. hth mike r.

eyelids do add a lot. Only quibble is that the lids don't look like they're part of the body itself. If that's the look you're going after then it's cool. However, by making the eyelids part of the body mesh itself can give you a bit more flexibility, imho. For instance, the lower lid can then be affected by the cheek of the character. And the top lids could have some poses created for it so it could have a sleepy lid pose to a wide-awake pose and so on... Any thoughts to eyebrows? Just curious. Really enjoying the progress so far. Great work!

Ordered my upgrade with the 2 day delivery and it was FedEx that delivered. And your model is just awesome. Using the Porcelain material is a big help, as was mentioned earlier. Made a big difference in the render of my character models.

Love the bolts, to me it adds more to the "story" of this picture. Wonderful, wonderful job!

Like the baggy pants, pretty much for reasons expressed earlier. But the hands still bother me and I figured out why: they don't "match" the body. If the hands were larger and the fingers thicker I feel it would add to the whole character. Unless the smallish (relatively) hands are intention. In that case, nevermind. I like this dude, in any case. Good work!

It's all really cute. Mean that in a good way. The worm's cool and has a bit of personality. Think the kids'll love this.

Wonderful job there, duuude! Suddenly I get one of the last scenes from Chinatown with this guy in it. "I'm a fruit" slap "I'm a vegtable" slap "I'm a fruit" slap... Well, it's early here. Really like the personality that this character has already. Best in continuing this Secret Project.

Very nice. Like the other Mike said, it's impressive for a first model. If only my first one looked that good! The abs are a bit "blocky" though. And the bottom of the ribcage is a bit undefined and there's some some wrinkles in that area that just don't match the rest of the model. Minor nits, those are, imho. Looking forward to the face getting done. Again, great job!